Trouble When You Walked In (Contemporary Romance) (2 page)

Maybe she shouldn’t have eaten it. Maybe he’d wanted her to save it until the skin grew wrinkled and the tiny heart yellowed.

What did she know about romance?

Nothing!

“We’ve got some interesting news,” he informed her.

His lethal levels of testosterone, combined with his clear-eyed confidence and scarily ambiguous use of the word
interesting
, made Cissie’s temples thrum.

Do you know my name?
she wondered.
How could you have forgotten that apple? And why are you here with news of any sort when you don’t even have a library card?

“It’s good news,” said Janelle, her glossy pink mouth bowed up.

Uh oh. If Janelle thought it was good, Cissie would probably hate it. And the fact that they were here at all …

Something wasn’t right.

But Boone was here. Boone, in her library!

“And what news is this, may I ask?” She might sound like a prissy schoolmarm or a spinster librarian, but she wasn’t a fossil. She refused to be a fossil. That happened when you had no lusty thoughts left. She had lusty thoughts. She had them all the time.

And they were about this guy, who was currently skewering her with the most compelling look she’d ever seen in her life: powerful, calm, yet somehow penetrating to her very soul—

As if he got her.

Something inside her flew open, like a paperback novel on a picnic table, its pages rattling in a brisk wind.

There was no way he got her, but it sure felt like it, probably because she was desperate and imagining things.

“For budget reasons,” he said, “the county wants Kettle Knob and Campbell to merge libraries. They’ll share a new space off the interstate.”

Cissie’s heart froze. It felt like something very basic was being ripped out from under her, and she was falling through clear space. Did Alice feel like this when she fell down the rabbit hole?

“Sit down.” Boone yanked a chair out from a table.

She sat. Her knees knocked together. She was wearing black Mary Janes. All she needed was a blue skirt, a white apron, and long yellow hair.…

“It’s not a bad thing,” Boone said.

But this library was a huge part of North Carolina state history. It had stood for so much over the years: equality when people weren’t treated equally, opportunity when no opportunity could be found. It was a treasure. A gem.

It couldn’t merge … and disappear.

Why couldn’t she say that out loud?

“This place will always have the historic marker on the outside,” said Janelle in a bored voice, “in case you’re worried we’re forgetting the building’s significance. We’re not.”

That was exactly what Cissie was thinking! And she was ashamed to admit it, but another thought galloped through her head, too, like Paul Revere on his horse, a totally self-serving one:
The legend of the library will end with me. The legend of the library will end with me!

No more librarians would find their true loves here.

Including her.

“Do you need water?” Boone asked.

She couldn’t deny what was going on in her body—somewhere deep inside lived not only a principled, scholarly Rogers but a hopeful, naïve youngish woman who’d just let
Brides
magazine slip out of her hands.

“Cissie,” Janelle said. “Take a Fruit Stripe.” She held out a pack of gum, one tin foil rectangle extended.

Cissie shook her head.

Janelle gave a gusty sigh. “It’s a good arrangement. Honest, it is.”

Cissie knew she shouldn’t be thinking of herself right now. She should be kicking Boone and Janelle out of the library onto the sidewalk.

Wait until Sally Morgan came in with her special needs teenager, Hank Davis, later to shelve books. Sally thought the legend applied to volunteers, too. She might even drop to the ground, she’d be so devastated when she heard the news. She did that a lot, the dropping thing. She was big on emotion. And how would she and Hank Davis get to the other place? They’d need a car.

Cissie’s jaw locked like an anaconda’s.

“We’d use the storefront next to Harris Teeter,” Boone went on, “halfway between the two towns, so everyone can stop by when they pick up their groceries.” His dimples came out—as if
that
show of charm would make his statements less shocking and egregious.

Cissie’s face heated up like a hot plate. The legend didn’t matter. It was only a silly story, built on a fluke of fate. She’d explain to Sally that it wasn’t worth losing sleep over. What mattered was the preservation of Kettle Knob’s historic library.

Yes, that was what mattered!

“But that place used to be a tattoo parlor,” she croaked, “and before that, a bar.”

There. She’d spoken. Her ancestors would roll over in their graves if their precious historical documents were housed in a place that lacked dignity and decorum.

“Think how many more book customers you’ll get,” Boone said. “Plus, your inventory will increase when you team up with Campbell. The budget for new books will go down thirty percent, I’m sorry to say, but that’s okay. Because if we stay here, we’ll lose fifty percent of it. The rest would have to go to the upkeep of this old house, and the county thinks that’s not an efficient use of funds.”

Blah blah blah
. Too much information, way too fast. But Cissie was a Rogers. She could think on her feet.…

Too bad she still couldn’t think. It was that wretched legend her heart was hammering about. Sally would lose hope of finding the right man to be both father to Hank Davis and a red-hot lover for herself. Nana would go to her grave without dancing at Cissie’s wedding. And Cissie would never meet her soul mate.

Not that the legend was
real
.

But what was?

Think, Cissie, think!

Books were real. Books and historical documents. Same with Sally’s lack of car and Cissie’s almost-virgin status, which she wished she could pretend wasn’t true, but it was.

“I-I can get the Friends of the Library to help with the upkeep,” she insisted. “They already do help a lot”—bless their six elderly, gossip-loving hearts, they’d raised three hundred dollars last year—“but we can raise more money. If everyone chips in, we should be fine.”

She looked pointedly at Boone, whose family could save the library by writing a single check, but his handsome brown-eyed gaze merely flickered with mayoral impatience and sex static, which was always humming within him, like an old transistor radio left on by accident.

“We’re looking into moving the county waste management office here.” Janelle tossed off the library’s long history with the same insouciance with which she flung her shiny, hair-sprayed curls over her shoulder. “They’re so cramped where they are.”

“What?”
Cissie heard her, but she didn’t believe her.

“Uh-huh,” said Janelle. “We’re getting creative. As for the new library location, it’s time we have a place where the communities of Campbell and Kettle Knob can interact and share resources.” She sounded so phony.
Like that’s a big surprise
, thought Cissie. “We’ll have the opportunity to read, research”—Janelle cast a smoldering look at Boone—“and enjoy our archival documents. Together.”

Only Janelle could make going to the library sound like a sex act.

Cissie was about to sneeze. She turned away, held her breath, and by some miracle got the sneeze under control. But the tiny break was enough to remind herself that a Rogers always sounded reasonable. They won things with their heads.

“Those were Rogers papers,” she reminded Janelle, “bequeathed to the town of Kettle Knob. Campbell didn’t send anyone to King’s Mountain, nor are they represented in any of our archival documents, except in passing reference as a neighboring town.”

Campbell thought it was hot stuff because a superfamous female pop star with current hits used to go to grade school there.

And a lot of rich people lived in Campbell, too, in Boone’s parents’ original fancy golf resort, which was now old enough that it was described in the newspaper’s crime column as an “established high-end neighborhood” every time someone got their leaf blower stolen or their Mercedes keyed. Most Campbell residents commuted to their doctor and attorney jobs in Asheville and only came to places like Kettle Knob to feel like they’d gone backward a hundred years for a few minutes.

And now Campbell had attracted a high-tech research facility with international connections.

But apart from that, Campbell was boring.

“Campbell doesn’t even have a good scenic overlook for couples to make out at,” Sally said every Valentine’s Day, which was when the Campbell Country Club held its annual two-hundred-fifty-bucks-a-ticket black-tie gala to benefit heart research. “Every mountain town should have at least one.”

“That King’s Mountain raid was definitely a Kettle Knob thing,” Boone agreed with Cissie now. “But…”

But?

His
family had led the local charge in the historic battle. Cissie’s family had documented it.

There were no
but
s!

She told him all that with her eyes. But he didn’t appear to be able to read her anymore, if he ever had. Probably because Janelle crossed her arms so that her breasts nearly spilled out of the top of her sweater. Boone didn’t exactly look at them, but they were like the elephant in the room—two DD-sized elephants.

“Campbell never bothered to save local accounts from the Civil War, either,” Cissie went on doggedly. “We have nine leather-bound Civil War–era journals in our collection.”

All donated by the Rogers family.

Janelle’s mouth soured. “Campbell was too busy to record anything.”

It was too busy being high on itself, like you
, Cissie wanted to say. But she was a coward. And maybe she was wrong about Janelle being a narcissist. After all, everyone had been wrong about Cissie in high school. She wasn’t nerdy. Much.

“Listen.” Janelle dropped her arms. With her boobs back into place, tension eased a tad. “It’s time to put old rivalries behind us. Think of it this way: the
county
sent a regiment to King’s Mountain. We’re not going to get nitpicky about where those citizens lived, are we?”

Okay, so Cissie was on the right track about Janelle, and surely, Boone wasn’t okay with this plan.

“You gotta admit, it’s hard to find this place,” he said.

He’d never found it, that was for sure. “It hasn’t changed location in over a hundred years,” Cissie reminded him.

He shrugged his manly shoulders. “You’re tucked away behind Main Street. But if we move right off the interstate? The library will be hopping. Kettle Knob’s history will be more accessible than ever to more people. It’s a win all around.”

Cissie’s ears burned. Something was happening to her fingernails, too. She’d never felt them before, but now they were all tingly and buzzy, and the sensation was going up her arms.

“I know what this is about,” she said.

Getting into Janelle’s pants. Spreading the Braddock glory. That was Boone’s win-win.

“Better resources for Kettle Knob and Campbell,” he replied like it was a no-brainer. “Progress despite trying times.”

Cissie turned to Janelle, hoping she’d have better luck addressing her.
Don’t think sleeping with our mayor means you’re going to get your hands on our precious Kettle Knob documents
, she wanted to say.
Don’t think that Campbell can boss us around. And don’t you dare think you can ruin our stupid legend.

But she couldn’t get the words out.

The truth was, some part of her must have really believed all the hoopla. Deep inside, Cissie thought she’d find true love
here
 … with a stranger who walked across the threshold and swept her off her feet.

She was such a schmuck.

But who could blame her? Daddy had been the librarian, working on his British lit PhD part-time, when Mother came to a writers’ retreat at nearby Appalachian State and ventured to Kettle Knob to check out the historic town, only to be smitten with Daddy instead.

They might be in Cambridge, England, now, researching esoteric subjects and lecturing for three years, but they wanted grandchildren. She knew this because last week Mother had called and said, “I’m writing a thesis on A. A. Milne’s
Winnie-the-Pooh
. Did you know Milne went to Cambridge?” which surely was a broad hint.

And if Cissie had to sleep alone the rest of her life because karma boomeranged on her for not keeping the legend going, she’d be unhappy, to put it mildly. She imagined she’d start muttering under her breath and yelling at children. She might even die behind her desk at the beer joint turned tattoo parlor turned library.

Old maid librarian
. Such a cliché. And from a different century. Modern librarians were hip and together.…

“Start preparing,” said Janelle. “It’s gonna happen.”

Waste managers were going to take over this beloved space!

“That’s a bit premature to suggest,” Cissie eked out, but just barely. In her head she said,
Over my dead body
, the way a scary, possessed person would have, in a voice that came from the depths of hell.

But no. She couldn’t manage that. A Rogers stayed calm and logical. Except for Nana. She was a throwback to some earlier rabble-rousing generation, probably from medieval times.

“Suzie—” Boone said.

“Cissie.”

“I meant Cissie—”

Too late. He was the mayor. And he’d given her that apple. He should be ashamed of himself. How many were in their high school graduating class? Seventy-five? And they’d been together for twelve years, many of them?

On shaking legs she stalked past him and Janelle to her desk, where she sat down with a
plonk
and stared stonily at the front door. She felt very alone.

If ever her soul mate were to show up, now would be a really good time. Especially as time was about to run out.

CHAPTER TWO

Cissie Rogers’s back was straighter than a goal post. The way she stared down Boone, with those high-beam blues, reminded him of the blinding field lights surrounding the Kettle Knob football field at night during a big game. If you looked at them too long, you just might throw the football out of bounds straight to your overly adoring mother and her gushing friends in the stands, every cool jock’s worst nightmare.